The evolution of intracluster medium in stellar clusters

TL;DR

This paper uses 3D hydrodynamical simulations to investigate why globular clusters lack significant intracluster gas, focusing on ram-pressure stripping and ionisation effects.

Contribution

It introduces comprehensive 3D simulations including stellar winds, radiation, and pressure to explain gas depletion in globular clusters.

Findings

Ram-pressure stripping effectively removes gas from clusters.

Ionising radiation contributes to gas heating and dispersal.

Combined effects explain observed gas paucity in GCs.

Abstract

Stars in globular clusters lose mass through slow stellar winds that are retained by the stellar cluster and contribute to build up a non negligible intracluster medium over time. However, all the observations so far found only a negligible amount of gas in GCs. We propose here to test different mechanisms such as ram-pressure stripping by the motion of the GC in the galactic halo medium and the inclusion of ionising sources to explain the lack of gas in GCs. We use full 3D hydrodynamical simulations taking into account stellar winds, ionising radiation, radiative heating and radiative pressure. We find that the combining effect of ram-pressure and ionisation are able to explain the negligible amount of gas observed in the core of intermediate-mass and massive GCs.